Locked lesson.
About this lesson
Set up your Archive file location and time increments for cleaning up your Outlook content.
Quick reference
Archive Settings
Setting up your Archive preferences is a good start to creating an Outlook Backup
When to use
You will rarely change these settings, so it is one of the first jobs to do when using Outlook.
Instructions
- Click File > Options > Advanced.
- Under AutoArchive, click AutoArchive Settings.
- Click the Run AutoArchive every # days box and specify how often to run AutoArchive.
- Choose any other options you want.
Change the AutoArchive settings for an individual folder
- In the Navigation Pane's folder list, right-click the folder you want to change, and click Properties.
- On the AutoArchive tab, choose the options you want.
If you want to customize your Archive Folder name and location, follow the steps below:
- Click the File Ribbon > Tools > Set Archive Folder
- Click New and name the folder and location
Then check your Data Files to make sure it worked
- Click the File Ribbon > Account Settings > Data Files tab
- 00:05 It's important that you have your archive set up and automatically archiving.
- 00:10 It's just another protection level.
- 00:12 When you're first new to Outlook,
- 00:14 you might not have an archive folder down here.
- 00:16 So we simply need to activate it and make sure it's turned on.
- 00:19 So those steps are click File, Options, Advanced, and
- 00:23 go to the AutoArchive Settings.
- 00:25 Let's go there.
- 00:27 On the Outlook ribbons, go ahead and
- 00:29 click on the File>Options way on the bottom left>Advanced on the left panel.
- 00:35 And before I go into the AutoArchive Settings, I do want to mention that you
- 00:40 can click this, Empty Deleted items folders when exiting Outlook.
- 00:44 So every day, it empties when you close your Outlook,
- 00:46 it's your personal preference.
- 00:48 For me, I like my stuff to stay in there for a couple of days before I empty it,
- 00:52 but you can absolutely turn that on.
- 00:54 Okay, let's go to AutoArchive Settings.
- 00:55 This will give you an archive folder on the bottom of your folder list.
- 00:59 Clicking AutoArchive Settings and now we set up everything we want.
- 01:04 Now, the Run AutoArchive every 60 days is the max I can have.
- 01:07 You can do it every day if you want, but it takes time.
- 01:10 So it's your choice.
- 01:11 Would you like to be prompted?
- 01:12 Absolutely, maybe I'm in the middle of something,
- 01:15 I don't want my autoarchive running.
- 01:17 During the autoarchive, do you want to delete expired?
- 01:20 Sure.
- 01:21 Do you want to archive or delete old items?
- 01:23 Of course.
- 01:25 Show archive folder in the folder list?
- 01:27 Yes, I want it down here, so if yours isn't showing up,
- 01:30 there might not be a checkmark on this box.
- 01:32 Put a checkmark there.
- 01:34 Default folder settings, clean out my items older than 18 months.
- 01:38 I want my calendar to retain history for a year and half.
- 01:42 I have mine set to 18 months, you can set yours to whatever you want.
- 01:46 Where do you want to move the old items to and
- 01:49 you can pick another folder in your system?
- 01:52 This is our archive data file.
- 01:54 So I'm leaving it there, I'm not going to change anything.
- 01:56 I definitely want it to land there.
- 01:58 You can permanently delete old items and
- 02:00 then apply these settings to all folders now.
- 02:03 Absolutely, click now, all my folders will have the same settings.
- 02:07 Clicking OK, clicking OK again, now let's take a look.
- 02:11 Right over here, I do have my archives, I can open it up.
- 02:14 Everything above is backing up down into this, it's great.
- 02:18 Now, I could create a new folder on this.
- 02:20 Maybe every year I want a new archive folder, I'm going to right-click
- 02:25 on Archives create New Folder, and I'm going to call this my 2024 archives.
- 02:31 And now, I can go back into my archive settings and tell everything to archive to
- 02:36 this folder for this year, and then the 2025 for the following year.
- 02:42 We can change the autoarchive settings for an individual folder.
- 02:46 So for instance, this folder, I really don't want it to archive every 60 days.
- 02:52 I want it to archive every five days, so I can right-click on that folder.
- 02:56 Look really hard looking for anything that says, archive, you're not going to see it.
- 03:00 So we are down here on Properties.
- 03:03 And now, you have to pay attention to the tabs in the background.
- 03:07 The one on the right says Autoarchive.
- 03:09 I can tell it not to archive these items.
- 03:13 Archive using the default folders, or clean out items older than three months.
- 03:19 I'll just say one month.
- 03:20 Move items to the default archive folder or move items to a new folder.
- 03:28 I'm going to leave it as my default archive.
- 03:30 So now I changed the rules for just that folder, but
- 03:35 everything else will archive as previously set up.
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